Empty Handed
by deadbythephinbellafeelsrn
Summary: Inventions weren't merely for entertainment. They were an escape. (AU in which everything's black and white until you meet your soulmate) Rated T just in case.


**a/n: Former P&amp;F fangirl finding out about this prompt and coming up with some angsty shit that definitely sounded a thousand times better in her head.**

**My apologies if the characters are OOC... It _is_ my first non-cliché P&amp;F fanfic after all. And please, if there's any grammatical mistakes, let me know! Spanish is my first language, so there's bound to be a mistake here.**

**(I... May have kind of screwed it up by the end. Idk. You tell me)**

* * *

Throughout his whole life, Phineas Flynn had been bothered by one insignificant feeling that was too arduous to handle: emptiness. He really didn't know how to avoid feeling it when walking down the street, seeing gray grass, gray fences, gray hair, gray bows, gray t-shirts, gray clouds and a gray world. Gradually, he felt as though his own heart was turning gray and dull, trapped inside the messy labyrinth of boredom without a way out of it.

That is, until he somehow discovered invention, and it was his escape.

He kept his gray mind busy as it fidgeted with the many tools and blueprints, he let his gray heart wander and give him projects to dream about and he made his gray hands work all day, with no distraction other than the occasional smile and elucidation on what he was creating today.

And some dark, cold nights, the gray would turn into black and he would wonder why exactly he'd been condemned to a gray world instead of being blessed by the colors many people had been lucky enough to know.

He knew his parents could see clearly. Lawrence often made remarks of how pretty Linda's _red _hair looked and she would tell him to not wear a _blue _shirt for a family dinner. Ferb also had this special gleam in his eyes that gave him away, and as for his friends, they would help Phineas pick which color his inventions should be.

Everyone around him seemed happy in their colorful worlds whilst he struggled with the emptiness of the various shades of gray. Well, everyone except one.

"Can you see?" He'd asked Isabella one day, as he built one of his many meaningless creations. She'd never even mentioned knowing colors, unlike all of his friends and family. This intrigued him— maybe he could find someone to bond with, someone to give him hope if they found colors first or someone he could give hope to if he was the lucky one.

"See what?" The fourteen-years-old girl replied, furrowing her brow in confusion. Of course. Colors must be natural to someone like her, who had a bright smile plastered to her face every day.

"Colors," he mumbled, realizing this conversation was pointless.

"I... Yeah, I do." Phineas had been expecting this response, but what he definitely hadn't seen coming was the way she hesitated to answer.

"How?" He asked, and only by the way he asked it Isabella knew he was broken.

"I've been seeing it for years," she confessed. "I can't remember when exactly. I can barely remember glimpses of my life in gray."

He groaned, and then realized this was the first time he'd ever let anyone see him like this. Desperately looking for an answer to an unsolvable problem, and getting upset with himself when he found none. So many theories and especulations, all for nothing. This seemed like an issue he'd never be able to fix, and he hated that with all his gray heart.

"You know, one would think you can too," Isabella said sympathetically. "Just because I could notice doesn't mean others can."

Phineas shook his head. This talk was becoming unbearable, because he had lost hope a long time ago, and he really was tired of making empty promises to himself.

"Look at me." He did as he was told and looked up at his friend, who smiled at him. "You're amazing, Phineas. Please don't let something as silly as the temporary lack of a color tell you otherwise."

That was the first time he'd really looked at her. Not a glance or a small glimpse or a bored stare, but his eyes looking deep into hers and then looking away after realizing a small detail.

Her bow was pink.

He immediately hugged her, speechless and utterly thankful for whatever Isabella had just done to make him see one or two colors among the grays and whites and blacks. "Thank you, Izzy," he mumbled.

After this, he began to look at her more often. He adored the look on her face when greeting him and his brother in the morning, he looked forward to her eagerness to help on their projects and he loved it when she was able to stay for dinner and tried her absolute best to be the most polite being on earth. These were all small things Phineas couldn't help but admire. Isabella brought color to his days —literally and metaphorically.

Soon enough, he was able to tell his mother how well her new headbands complemented her red hair or tell his father that his blue shirt wasn't that bad. The gleam in Ferb's eyes became more natural, since he saw it every time he looked in the mirror, and he stopped needing help to design everything he created.

But after all of this, he realized his inventions weren't an escape anymore. He was thoroughly enjoying it like he never had before. No, _she_ was his escape.

Isabella had helped him see most of the colors somehow. Sure, the picture looked a little messed up when he walked down the street and saw a grayish blue sky, grass that was an odd, brownish shade of green and clouds that still were gray, but there were so many colors he'd never seen before, which gave him hope that one day he might see bright green grass, a blue sky and snow-white clouds.

And it wasn't until Phineas decided to thank her for changing his life, thinking how much he loved that smile of hers, that he realized he was hopelessly in love with her, and he was able to see everything clearly.

But the moment he stopped feeling empty was when he kissed her and she kissed back and not even all the colors in the world were enough to describe this feeling.

Finally, he was done with the emptiness, and it seemed like he was done with it for good.


End file.
